Okay... I'll admit it... I got myself in a stupid pickle.

My problem wish sheer, newness. And I made MANY mistakes along the way.

My first mistake was to use Geocities for a paid website. The second, was to buy a domain under them.

Eventually, I wised up and realized I was being way overcharged. So I went 'a searchin' (wish I found Webhostingtalk while this was happening) and I settled on Datahosts.

Being the clueless newbie that I was, I thought to myself, "Ah, I'm with a new host now! I'll close this account, and reopen my domain under this one!"

Whoops.

Needless to say, (if you've read my rants about datahosts already) I had to go somewhere else. The Geocities account was still closed... and THEN I realized my mistake.

You see, when I closed my Geocities account, I closed all the e-mails that went with it. Including the admin@mydomain.com e-mail.

That's the e-mail I needed to do a transfer from Yahoo to Geocities. Without it, I can't athorize the damn transfer.

I've worked around the problem, slightly. Instead of Mydomain.com, I've used Mydomain.org. Still... it would be nice if I could ever get the dot com name back.

For those of you who have ever used Geocities, the help there is nil. When you send in a question, they send a copy of their help guide, back.

So, am I screwed? I think I'm screwed until the URL comes up for sale again. And this is really a half hearted attempt.

Any suggestions?

Hi,

Actually this is not that uncommon because GeoCities is huge.

To make this easier - you can again have access to the domain's Admin email, just change it first - I know the domain's control panel at GeoCiteis/Yahoo is seperate from the hosting account.

Change it to any other email ( even free mail), then take it from there.

(Late Advise - Never use the same site's email for it's admin)

Would changing the e-mail on Geocities change the information change the whois contact e-mail as well?

Thanks for your above reply.

The new admin email should appear in the whois in a max of 12 to 24 hours. You should also recive all confirmation requests there to. I also recomenc you change your registrar to www.eNom.com www.Joker.com or Star_Gate - cheeper and much easier to handle.

well not directly to enom.com, but to it's resellers :)

OhSoKorny,

First off, paying GeoCities for their hosting is not silly at all, especially for people with just a couple of domains/websites who are looking for some user-friendly interface.

Registering a domain name through them is a bit on the expensive side now that the average market price is below US$10, but you may always transfer registrar next year.

Closing an existing account too soon is definitely the newbie experience you need to learn, but hey, who hasn't been a newbie?

But many domain registrants still don't understand the rule of NEVER to use an e-mail of the very same domain you are registering as the Admin Contact; since if there is any problem with your host, it will only make modifying your DNS info more difficult.

Last but not least: it is not impossible to recover your domain even when your Admin Contact e-mail is not active. Most registrars have the mechanism for legitimate owner/registrant to do so by e.g. sending them a fax and/or with copies of say your photo ID and things llike that. You might want to check out their FAQ for this.

Hope this helps.